The Reformers generally taught that the Great Commission was entrusted to the apostles and that the apostles fulfilled it by going to the ends of their known world. This is not to say that they had no missionary vision. Hadrian Saravia (1531–1613) and Justinian von Welz (1621–61) found reason enough to write treatises in which they urged Christians to recognize their responsibility to obey the Great Commission and evangelize the world. Nevertheless, it remained for William Carey (1761–1834) to make one of the most compelling cases for the applicability of the Great Commission to all believers. The first section of his treatise An Inquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (published in 1792) made a concerted argument that individual Christians should join together in an effort to take the gospel to the Heathen (at that time the common designation for the unevangelized) in obedience to the Great Commission. Some historians have concluded that An Inquiry rivals Luther’s Ninety-five Theses in terms of its influence on church history.



 A. Scott Moreau, Harold Netland, and Charles van Engen, Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Baker Books; A. Scott Moreau, 2000), 413.